The SEI helps advance software engineering principles and practices and serves as a national resource in software engineering, computer security, and process improvement. The SEI works closely with defense and government organizations, industry, and academia to continually improve software-intensive systems. Its core purpose is to help organizations improve their software engineering capabilities and develop or acquire the right software, defect free, within budget and on time, every time.

Abstract

This report models the approach a focused attacker would take in order to breach an organization through web-based protocols and provides detection or prevention methods to counter that approach. It discusses the means an attacker takes to collect information about the organization's web presence. It also describes several threat types, including configuration management issues, authorization problems, data validation issues, session management issues, and cross-site attacks. Individual threats within each type are examined in detail, with examples (where applicable) and a potential network monitoring solution provided. For quick reference, the appendix includes all potential network monitoring solutions for the threats described in the report. Due to the ever-changing entity that is the web, the threats and protections outlined in the report are not to be taken as the definitive resource on web-based attacks. This report is meant to be a starting reference point only.